Free Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade Page A

steadily, which brought no objections from her because she noticed that the more he drank the funnier he got. His drinking amused her, and she treated his repeated references to hangovers as jokes because he never appeared really ill, only unsteady on his feet. What she liked best about him was his exhilaration, a cockiness that she chose to interpret as a sign of health and energy.
    She hated the taste of liquor herself and refused to touch it.
    During that fall and winter, she freely poured into Edwin Parker her whole self, all the love she had to give. Even though their involvement continued to deepen, she was far from convinced that anything serious would come of it. As a love-starved and insecure young woman, she overlooked defects in a man she judged her superior because her attention was focused on her own shortcomings. Since he possessed physical beauty and an impressive pedigree, the sense of myopia unavoidably deepened. Eddie, in contrast to other men she had met, professed to admire independent women who were able to hold jobs and look after themselves. Never did he speak of incarcerating a wife in a suburban backwater, nor could she imagine him sitting before a fire on a wintry evening reading aloud from “The Song of Hiawatha.” On the contrary, he was always ready to raise hell and tear up the town.
    Nevertheless, she took care to minimize her professional ambitions around him for fear of disturbing his masculine sensibilities. She also continued to feel uneasy about his family, especially his grandfather. That he made fun of the Parkers made no difference. If these patricians ever learned of her Jewishness, she could just imagine their dismay, how quickly they would snatch him back to their black-robed bosoms.
     
     
    Many years later, in a hard mood, she told friends that she had wanted to marry Eddie because he had a nice, clean name. The people to whom she made this admission were Jewish; while they loved her enough not to take offense, they could not help lifting their eyebrows: Did she think their names were unclean? It was not a comparable situation at all, she protested, because their Jewish names sounded acceptable in some inexplicable way that Rothschild did not.
    The truth was that in 1916 her desire for independence evaporated, along with her fantasy of becoming Edith Sitwell, and she longed to be a wife like all the other women she knew. Making bright conversation with her boardinghouse comrades had grown exhausting and she realized for the first time that it required effort to be a good sport with men. All she wanted was to be alone with Eddie, as if he and he only was the remedy for her maladies. She began to see marriage breaking on her horizon like a rainbow that promised sunlight and safety.
    Though it was true that she detested the name Rothschild, Eddie’s name would have meant nothing to her had it not been attached to a man she adored. Edwin Pond Parker II resembled a package encased in shiny wrappings. At twenty-three, dazzled and in love, she did not pause to wonder very much about its contents.
     
     
     
    In the spring of 1917 the future resolved itself. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson, reelected five months earlier on promises to keep the country out of war, delivered a war message to a joint session of Congress and received a standing ovation. Immediately Eddie Parker began to talk about enlisting, although the idea of killing anyone, even a German, made him uncomfortable. He planned to volunteer as an ambulance driver. No sooner did he make this decision than he asked Dorothy to marry him. Under the circumstances, it seemed like the sensible thing to do.
    Some time that spring he escorted her to Hartford to meet his family. Dora and Harris Parker were polite to her, as were Eddie’s little brother Harris, Jr., and his sister Ruth, herself recently engaged and preparing for her wedding. Despite their cordiality, Dorothy was quick to notice that they were treating her like a